Superstition at bay. (1915)

From the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The word “God” as a general term has lost all definite meaning. To each individual it means something different. To a fanatic it may stand for a terrible personal power who chastises us for our neglect of his vanity. To a philosopher it may symbolise the universe as a whole moving inexorably according to natural law. To the charlatan, however, it is first and last a word to juggle with.

God is the favourite subject of a writer by the name of Harold Begbie. To the plain man his work appears unadulterated claptrap. High-sounding words are strung together in a meaningless but impressive way that is strongly reminiscent of some lady novelists when dealing with the sorrows of his Satanic majesty. There exists in his writing such an obvious striving after tinsel effect that his work conveys the strongest impression of insincerity. Here is a sample from his effort, in the “Daily Chronicle” of Sept. 23rd:

“Theism is the inescapable faith of rationalism. Use your reason, your reason only, and you must believe in Mind. Contemplate the universe as a rational being, and unless you say you cannot believe in anything at all, you must conclude that penetrating and interpenetrating all material phenomena is the Spirit of Eternal Life. Empiricism is as dead as Deism. Atheism is only possible to the fool. No living mind can rest in agnosticism. There is reason in the universe. Life is spiritual. The march of the human race is towards God.”

It is worth reading twice. As an example of turgid twaddle it would be hard to beat.

He says elsewhere in the same article:

“ . . . consider what would be the state of Europe if Christ had debated the possibility of the existence God, instead of asserting with a simplicity which makes a most instant appeal to every sort and condition of mind that God is our Father. Intuition is a part of psychology.”

Such a statement gives one furiously to think. What, indeed, one wonders, would really be the state of Europe if Christ had not simply asserted that God is Our Father ? Perhaps instead of the happy and harmonious communities that now unite in the worship of Christ, that do not grind the faces of the poor, and that give constant cause to the reverently minded to praise the abounding and wonderful goodness of God, we might have in its place–––. But enough ! The state of Europe is too horrible for levity. Even Begbie’s absurdity is revolting rather than amusing. The awful thing that exists, and which Begbie implies we should be thankful for as the result of Christ’s assertion, utterly defies description. An ounce of civet, good apothecary ! In our disgust we turn to old Omar the tent-maker, and repeat with him:

Ah, Love ! could you and I with Fate conspire

To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire.

Would not we shatter it to bits and then

Remould it nearer to the heart’s desire !

In the London “Daily News” of a few days before Harold Begbie had given us a two column interview with General Booth on the “Call for a Great National Religious Crusade.” Begbie says

“I asked him how the international character of the Salvation Army had been affected by the war. He replied, ‘War has strengthened the spirit of internationalism. Throughout the neutral nations there is a fresh enthusiasm for the Army ; and Germany itself the Salvation Army is expressing a renewed loyalty to the international idea.’ ”

The only comment that it is necessary to make on such a statement is supplied all unconsciously by the interviewer, who says :

“The son of William Booth finds just now his international religion buffeted by the winds of war. He of all religious leaders in this country is most concerned by the international character of the war. German Salvationists are shooting English Salva­tionists, and Russian Salvationists are shooting Austrian Salvationists.”

And what is the Salvation Army doing in this war to interpret the spirit of Jesus ? Its message in this crisis will surely show how pure and transcendental is the teaching of Christ, and how clear and unmistakeable is the call of Christian duty ? Here again the interview gives us some valuable information, for it says :

“There are something like 40,000 Salvationists in the British Army, 20,000 of them out-and-outers, and 20,000 adherents. Some of these, as yon may imagine, are troubled in their souls by having to kill. One of them mentioned this difficulty, and to him another Salvationist made answer: ‘Look here; what you’ve got to do is this : you’ve got to do your duty to God, and King, and country. If in the course of doing that you happen to kill your fellow-man, that’s no affair of yours.”

Surely nothing could be more fearless, nothing could be more truly Christian than this ! Such advice given to British, to German, to Austrian, Russian and French Salvationists must be admirably calculated to bring the Kingdom of God nearer realisation on earth !

There are not lacking signs, however, that indicate that General Booth is sensible of the difficulty of his position. And to those who have been awakened only by the present crisis to question the dogma of the goodness of God, he makes effective answer :

“People who accepted without murmur the atrocious suffering caused by those enemies of the human race [drink, prostitution, and sweating] suddenly wake up now and ask, How can you believe in a God with Christians killing Christians and Europe deluged with blood’ ? Has Christian never killed Christian till now ? What nonsense they talk ! This war is nothing—nothing compared with the murderous destruction of sin, God does not work like an autocrat in the moral sphere. God is omnipotent ; but omnipotence cannot make five of two and two, or make a lie a truth. Why does God permit this war ? Why does he permit sin ? God is not responsible for sin, and he is not responsible for war. Man is.”

While the above silences all those who accept the hellish conditions of capitalism as consistent with the goodness of God, it is quite futile against those who do not.

What evidence is there of the goodness of God ? What evidence is there of God at all ? Where, indeed, is God anything but an expression of man’s ignorance in face of the awful and ruthless immensity of nature ?

God, says General Booth in effect, is omnipotent, and is at the same time not omnipotent ! He is the essence of all goodness, but has created war and sweating and infinite misery.

He is omniscient, and knowing all things, including man, man’s sin and tendency to sin, war, anguish, destitution, wretchedness and sorrow incalculable. Yet He is not responsible. Man, his puppet, is responsible. To God is attributed all good : to man, whom God created, is attributed all evil. Such is really the meaning of General Booth’s assertions. Their nonsense is evident. It is also suggested in the interview that God’s plaything, man, is being punished because he has neglected the All Wise, All Powerful, and All Good God. Truly the absurdity of this cantankerous All-Goodness recalls the little girl’s natural history essay. “The elephant,” said the young lady, “is a noble animal, but when infuriated he will not do so.”

To all the Salvation Army chiefs’s points, however, the old tent-maker has made answer from the standpoint of a true believer :

Thou who man of baser earth didst make,

And who with Eden didst devise the snake ;

For all the sin wherewith the face of man

Is blackened, man’s forgiveness give and take !

The spectacle of the warring nations of Europe supplicating the same good and almighty God for armed victory over each other is ludicrous enough. Small wonder that it is subject for derision. Moreover, practically every religious sect has hastened to put its private brand of Almighty Power at the service of the capitalist interests which are responsible for the modern machine-made murder. Chaplains and priests of many denominations are helping to stiffen the men at the front. And at home the various churches continue as best they may to swell the patriotic chorus in aid of their paymasters the ruling class.

Nevertheless the power of religion to keep the workers servile is fast waning. Technical progress, the advance of knowledge, the march of events, drive it continually farther from real life. True it is that religion cannot entirely disappear until man’s relations with his fellows and with nature become clear, ordered, rational and un­ambiguous. True it is that man’s emancipation from wage slavery, from irrational poverty and ignorance will alone finally lay the ghost of superstition. Yet the present fading of religion is an unmixed good. The power of religion has ever been potent for evil. It has been throughout political history the abettor of oppression, the enemy of freedom, of science, and of humanity. It is still used as far as practicable as the hand-maiden of class domination.

As Socialists, indeed, our main, attack must be against the entrenched political power of capitalism, and to this all else must be subordinated; but the war on religion, which is the vis inertiae of human development, is part of the work that must be done in that great struggle.

The war on religion will break down the barrier that our enemies maintain against us. It will take the workers a step nearer their goal. It will open up fresh vistas to working-class intelligence and put men face to face with the bitter reality of modern social life and its trend ; and this can have but one result.

In so far, therefore, as the toilers escape from the paralysing embrace of religion their advance will be freer, their vision clearer, their knowledge more profound, and their determination to make the proletarian cause triumph more unshakeable. A word by the way, therefore, that helps disperse the fog of superstition, that unveils the absurdity of the claims of the priests, and that lets light in upon the indubitable fact that the workers of the world can rely on no Messiah, on no metaphysical cloud-pusher, but only on their own strong right arm, such a word by the way is not only a helpful thing, but it has an inevitable place in the greater struggle for human emancipation, in the greater battle for Socialism.

F. C. Watts

50 Years Ago: The Housing Question (1975)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

How eloquent both Mr. Neville Chamberlain, the present Health Minister, and Mr. Wheatley, his predecessor in that office can become over the deplorable housing conditions of the workers! And what grand schemes both can produce to solve the problem ! And yet the housing problem is as troublesome as ever. Why?

In that Conservative newspaper, the Sunday Chronicle, March 1st, Mr. Harold Begbie has an article, entitled “The Selfish Builder”, from which we cull the following: —

‘Of all the sections of Labour which have thus paralyzed our industrial activity and brought incalculable sufferings and sorrows on the head of the working classes, none stands so clearly and so cruelly guilty as that section of Labour which controls the building trade . . . the guilt lies at the door of those politicians of Labour who have encouraged the operatives of the building trade to make a selfish use of the nation’s direct necessity.’

The national and municipal housing schemes of the Labour Party have not succeeded, for the same reason that other schemes fail. Capitalism, whether private, municipal, or under State ownership has no mere ethical or ‘spiritual’ basis, its basis is material profit, obtained by the exploitation of the workers and realised by the sale of goods. If there is no sale there is no realisation of profit, and it is solely because the great majority of workers can neither buy nor even rent a newly-built house that the output of houses is restricted.

Now if one were to go to the National Federation of Building Trade Operatives . . . their secretary has repeatedly pointed out that bricklayers and plasterers are on the books as unemployed, despite the cant of the employers about the shortage of skilled labour.

Moreover, is there any cry about the shortage of labour when a warehouse, mill, factory, bank, theatre or cinema is wanted? No, these jump up like mushrooms overnight.

(From an unsigned editorial “The Truth About the Housing Question”, Socialist Standard May 1925.)

Editorial: The Truth about the Housing Question. (1925)

Editorial from the May 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

The present Government, like the preceding “Labour” Government, has been making a pretence that they have at heart the welfare of the workers, especially with regard to the housing conditions. How eloquent both Mr. Neville Chamberlain, the present Health Minister, and Mr. Wheatley, his predecessor in that office, can become over the deplorable housing conditions of the workers ! And what grand schemes both can produce to solve the trouble ! And yet the housing problem is as troublesome as ever. Why?

Before answering the question, let us see what the opponents of Socialism—the Conservatives and the “Labour” Party—have to say on the matter. In that Conservative paper, “The Sunday Chronicle,” March 1st, Mr. Harold Begbie has an article entitled “The Selfish Builder”; from it we cull the following –

  “Of all the sections of Labour which have thus paralysed our industrial activity and brought incalculable sufferings and sorrows on the head of the working classes, none stands so clearly and so cruelly guilty as that section of Labour which controls the building trade. If the nerves of the mothers of the nation are breaking down, if their children are feeble, dispirited, and mentally dull; if there is more bitterness and cruel misery in our cities than ever existed heretofore ; and, if, among other tragic sins, the deadly crime of incest is hideously increasing, then the guilt for these things lies at the door of those cadging politicians of Labour who have encouraged the operatives of the building trade to make a selfish use of the nation’s direst necessity.”

Mr. Begbie, in his article, is evidently not concerned about proving that the building trade operatives are responsible for the lack of houses, he is told to “sling mud” at the working class and is paid for it. Now it is the building workers; sooner or later it will be another section. In any case Mr. Begbie is expressing the view of the employers. What the Master Builders’ Association plainly want is to speed up the builders’ operatives to the highest possible pitch, to bring in a system of dilution to the industry and flood the labour market with cheap labour power. In other words, the employers want a larger or speedier output at a relatively reduced wages bill, so as to leave them a larger margin of profits. Wherever the workers have not been strong enough to resist this, or where they have been gulled by “Labour” politicians, and trade union leaders, on patriotic grounds, like the engineers during the war, to accept such a system of dilution and speeding up, then has it spelt disaster, in every instance, for the workers.

The “Labour” Party hold the view that the shortage of houses is due to the failure of private enterprise, and that national and municipal enterprise should take its place, failing this the State should subsidise private enterprise by money grants.

The national and municipal housing schemes of the Labour Party have not succeeded, for the same reason that other schemes fail. Capitalism, whether private, municipal or under State ownership, has no mere ethical or “spiritual” basis, its basis is material profit, obtained by the exploitation of the workers and realised by the sale of goods. If there is no sale there is no realisation of profit, and it is solely because the great majority of the workers can neither buy or even rent a newly-built house that the output of houses is restricted. This happens in all spheres of production. Neither the Conservative Party nor the “Labour” Party will reveal the real cause of the lack of new houses for the workers. They will lie and bluff, and say how greatly they sympathise with the workers, and both will blame the shortage of the skilled tradesmen—bricklayers and plasterers—as the real trouble. In fact, no employers’ henchmen have worked harder for the dilution of labour in the building industry than the so-called Labour politician—the bogey of Mr. Begbie.

Now if one were to go to the National Federation of Building Trade Operatives instead of to the capitalist and “Labour” press one would find, as their secretary has repeatedly pointed out, that bricklayers and plasterers are on the books as unemployed, despite the cant of the employers about the shortage of skilled labour.

Moreover, is there any cry about the shortage of labour when a warehouse, mill, factory, bank, theatre or cinema is wanted? No ! These jump up like mushrooms overnight.

On this matter A. Sayle, formerly Housing Sub-Inspector in the Ministry of Health, says :—

  “In one town in which delay was said to be due to lack of skilled labour, much of which was then concentrated on building a new cinema, it transpired that the owner of the cinema was the chairman of the Council responsible for restricting just such ‘luxury building.’” (“The Houses of the Workers,” pages 117-118.)

So much, then, for the bogey of shortage of skilled labour.

The master builders will not concentrate on the building of houses for workers because there is no effective demand for them. That and that alone is the reason, and this again is due to the impoverished condition of the working class who are compelled to submit, in capitalist society, to a lowering status of existence. Workers may require food, boots, clothing, etc., but if they have not the means to buy these commodities, sooner or later production of these commodities will be restricted. In like manner, if the workers require better houses, that in itself is not enough, in capitalist society, to produce them. The question is : Have they the means to pay a higher weekly rental, let alone buy them? We shall let Mr. Sayle answer :—

  “These facts (unemployment) and others which emerge from them have a direct bearing on the question of rents. If rents of 10s. and 12s. 6d. per week, plus rates, were within the means of men earning £5 per week (and the number of these was never as large as it was represented to be—the majority even of skilled fitters, miners, boot operatives, and jewellers earned wages nearer £4 than​ £5 per week) [1919] they were clearly beyond the means of men earning £3 or £2 with the cost of living under other heads still 100 per cent. above pre-war level. The position taken up by the Ministry in the early months of 1920—that high rents were justified by high wages—had to be formally abandoned after the result of the appeal of the Leeds Corporation against the Ministry’s insistence upon such rents.” (A. Sayle : “The Houses of the Workers, page 169.)

So it is plain if high rents cannot be charged, neither the municipality or the State are very keen on venturing on the production of houses for workers; and even if subsidised by the State, private contractors find it more lucrative to build palaces than houses for workers.

Generally speaking, the chance of poverty-stricken and frequently unemployed workers obtaining better housing conditions is a practically hopeless one. The capitalist class, assisted by “Labour” politicians and trade union leaders in forcing down the wages of railway workers, miners, engineers and workers of various industries to their present degraded level, have prevented the workers from getting even many necessaries of life, to say nothing of comforts.

The Housing Question is insoluble under capitalism, and like all other “social problems” can only be solved by social ownership.

A Look Round. (1920)

From the December 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

From a recently published book, "The Mirrors of Downing Street. By a Gentleman with a Duster," which has excited a great deal of interest, I take the following quotation concerning one of our greatest and most versatile actors, Mr. David Lloyd George, the Welsh Wizard.

The occasion was the early part of the war, when those interested in its prosecution were shrieking out that if more and more munitions were not forthcoming "we" should lose the war and civilisation would be retarded for a hundred years. The government had arranged a meeting of the principal armament manufacturers with the object of persuading them to part with their trade secrets.

Quite naturally, the assembled capitalists demurred at this. They certainly wanted to win the war, but didn't care to jeopardise their advantages in any future commercial prosperity. To the insistent demands of the military and Government officials they simply returned a verdict of "nothing doing." At this despairing moment, when all appeared to be lost, our hero leaned forward in his chair, very pale, very earnest, and very quiet.

  "’Gentlemen,’ he said in a voice which produced an extraordinary hush, 'have you forgotten that your sons at this very moment are being killed—killed in hundreds and thousands? They are being killed by German guns for want of British guns. Your sons, your brothers, boys at the dawn of manhood ! They are being wiped out of life in thousands ! Gentlemen, give me guns. Don't think of your trade secrets. Think of your children. . . . Help them ! Give me those guns.' . . . His voice broke, his eyes filled with tears, and his hand, holding a piece of notepaper before him, shook like a leaf. There was not a man who heard him whose heart was not touched, and whose humanity was not quickened. The trade secrets were pooled."

#    #    #    #

Quite a contrast to his attitude towards the miners, where he denies the justice of their claim for another two shillings, and calls upon the country to "resist this attack with all its strength," is given by the writer in the same book, wherein he states that in conversation with Mr. Lloyd George during the war, he (the writer) suggested that probably one cause of the unrest existing in factories was the fact that "boys could earn fifteen or sixteen pounds a week by merely watching a machine they knew nothing about, while the skilled foremen, who alone could put those machines right, and who actually invented new tools to make the new machines of the inventors, were earning only the fixed wage of 50s. a week. 

" 'What does it matter,' Lloyd George exclaimed impatiently, ' what we pay those boys as long as we win the war? '"

#    #    #    #

The ethics of capitalism are altered to suit time and place. But property is a sacred institution anywhere and any time— under capitalism. When the war was on our "heroes," whether they knew it or not, were fighting simply in defence of capitalist property. War or no war, the same legal machinery is used to protect property against all comers, be they miners, Bolsheviks, Sinn Feiners, Americans, or what not. The point was nicely brought out the other day when an ex-soldier got fined for shooting rabbits, despite the fact that, as the soldier pointed out, he got a Mons Star for shooting Germans !

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There are many people who assert that what is needed in order to bring about a better state of life is a Labour government. Others pin their [hopes on the] the efficacy of the League of Nations. Those who use their intelligence and take a longer view have faith in neither. The adoption of either or both does not threaten the existing basis of society. We have it on the authority of Mr. J. R. Clynes, M.P. that even under a Labour government a League of Nations will be necessary, although "the more we have capitalist government the greater the need for the League." (Putney, 7.11.20.)

It would thus appear that what is necessary to the administration of the political machinery of the capitalist class will be utilised also by the labour fakers in the event of their being placed in power. Does it suggest their belief in identity of interest between capital and labour ? Ask Brace.

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Speaking of Labour governments, it seems we are to have one before long. Preparations are being made to pull it off at the forthcoming General Election. The unemployment situation must have affected the Government. Jobs are very scarce and the Labour Party is sore in consequence. Even the adherents of the Labour Party are beginning to lose faith in their patron saint, Mr. Lloyd George, and to wonder why it is they have been so uncharitably turned down after throwing the whole of their resources into winning the war for the British capitalists. Now they are determined that they will show the country how a government should be run.

As a preliminary we are presented with an outline of what will happen in "the England of to-morrow" which is put forward by Mr. J. H. Thomas, M.P., a prominent Labour Party official and one of capitalism's greatest assets. Mr. Thomas tells us all about it in a book which he has published under the highly apprehensive title of "When Labour Rules." After paying a handsome tribute to the Prince of Wales as "a unifying factor to the Empire as a whole" he sets out the proposals which are expected to be realised when the Labour Party comes into power. They may be taken as embodying the aspirations of that part of the British public known as "organised labour," and whose political expression is the Labour Party.

First of all there would be an hereditary constitutional Monarchy with an Upper Chamber (sigh of relief from George) ; Purchase of the Liquor Trade by the Government based on a pre-war value of 350 millions, all profits to be devoted to the lowering of taxation (broad smiles on the faces of the big-bellied landlords); Old Age Pensions at 60 ("Thank God!" exclaim the old folks) ; Nationalisation of Mines, Railways, etc., so as to promote efficiency in various supplies and reducing prices by limiting profits (chorus: "Wot ! prices coming down!)

"There will be" says Mr. Thomas, "when Labour comes into power, I hope, only one tax —income tax. . . . We should not be lavish in our expenditure for a fighting machine. But there would have to be an Army and Navy capable of backing our decisions, (note this) and these would be maintained." (Sure ! Col. Ward, Col Thorne, and other Labour militarists will want jobs, won't they?) As to finance, a capital levy would be instituted, probably realising 1,000 millions. Industrial questions to be solved by "collective bargaining between the organised workers and the employers." The fiscal policy will be Free Trade "for the sake of the workmen and the sake of peace." As regards the position of women under Labourism, legislation will be sought to abolish all night work for women in industry. It will be Labour's object "as far as possible (!) to wipe out the necessity for married women working at all. When Labour comes into power, however, women will be greatly encouraged and helped in every way to enter Parliament, to join Cabinets, even to the extent of a woman becoming Prime Minister of England if she be eminently suited to and the right person for that position."

And more to the same effect. No doubt the right persons will get the right jobs. But to those who will occupy the humbler walks in life we can offer Mr. Thomas's consolation that "there is nothing gives so great a feeling of security and pride and stability as the owning of even a small cottage."

By far the best feature of the book is its price—ten shillings—which is prohibitive.

To sum up, we find that under a system of Labour Government there will exist capital, exploitation, wage slavery, armies, navies, police, prisons, women labour, industrial problems, old age pensions, unemployment, wars, kings and queens, House of Lords, parliaments, prime ministers, profits, taxes, poverty, plutocrats and parasites of all kinds, either stated or implied.

All of which entitles one to ask in comparing it with the present capitalist system of government : "What is the difference ?" If this is all the Labour Party can do, compare it with the Socialist object to be found in our columns, then ask yourself is it worth while bolstering up these fakers even through your trade union affiliation.

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More and more does the Municipal Election take on the character of a Parliamentary Election. Labels are more or less definite and the programmes are based usually on the lines of a "national" appeal rather than a local. In the recent election a great deal of attention was paid by the "non-progressives" to such questions as Bolshevism, Sinn Fein, Socialism, Pro-Germanism, High Rates and Taxes, Unemployment, ''Squandering of the People's Money,'' etc., attributing all these "evils" to the activities of Labour representatives both inside and outside the national and local administrative bodies. Whether these had any effect on the "hard-headed and clear-thinking British working men and women" to whom the appeal was made, or not, the fact remains that out of 747 candidates put up by the various Labour organisations in 70 leading boroughs, only 199 were successful. In some of the big industrial centres like Liverpool and Bradford (where 23 in each city stood for election) not a single one was returned.

Clearly something more is needed than "Labour" has to offer if the feeling of reverence for the master class and its institutions is ever going to be eradicated from the minds of that same "clear-thinking" working man.

Tom Sala

Begbie Answered. (1917)

From the October 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an article entitled “Democracy in Flood” (“Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper,” Sept. 2) Harold Begbie unloads his mind. After admitting the unhuman conditions of existence of a large section of the working class of the North (it might be information to him to be told that these conditions are not confined to one section or to the North, but to the whole working class, North, South, East and West), he says, with astonishment expressed in every word, that the pitmen of a certain Northern town are eager for lectures on a subject of real intellectual interest. In this town there are gatherings of 3,000 men every Sunday in a large hall, and Mr. Begbie says : “I am assured that these quarrymen, pitmen, turners, fitters, shipwrights, are debating the whole question of human existence. Industrialism is now recruited from the ranks of a partially educated democracy which is determined to become more educated, which sees that education is not only a means of improving their social position, but a means of spiritual evolution.”

The latter part of which prepares us for the introduction of the Holy Spirit and his partners, God and the Eternal Will. Mr. Begbie continues:

   They want not only food for their bodies, but better sustenance for their minds ; they would be loyal to the immortal spirit within them, those longings for growth, knowledge, and spiritual power, the denial of which brutalises the human race. They are conscious of sinning against the Holy Spirit in resting satisfied with their life as it is.

These working men are too hard-headed says this canting humbug, to dream of revolution. “Constitutional evolution” is the thing. Unfortunately he does not tell us what he means by “constitutional evolution.” But seemingly it is a high sounding name for some lure for drawing the workers from what should be their real object: the only one that the master class and their touts fear—revolution.

Let me quote further:

  War has revealed to them [the workers] the power of the State; this of itself is the greatest revolution [he means “constitutional evolution,” surely] in the history of the world, this realising by democracy of the almost boundless powers of the State action, i.e., co-operation.

Here we have either the confused mind of the sentimental Harold or a deliberate attempt to cause confusion by writing of the State as if it represented the people. From Frederick Engel’s “Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State” we glean the following :

  The State is simply a product of society at a certain stage of evolution. It is the confession that this society has become hopelessly divided against itself, has entangled itself in irreconcilable contradictions which it is powerless to banish.
  The State is the result of the desire to keep down class conflicts. But having arisen amid these conflicts, it is as a rule the State of the most powerful economic class that by force of its economic supremacy becomes also the ruling, political class and thus acquires new means of subduing and exploiting the oppressed masses. The antique State was, therefore, the State of the slave owners for the purpose of holding the slaves in check. The feudal State was the organ of the nobility for the oppression of the serfs and dependent farmers. The modern representative State is the tool of the capitalist exploiters of wage labour.

In the above Engels answers men of the Begbie type, and I hope that the working class will gather understanding from history, ancient and modern, and not be led astray by sentimental talk about the "rich and the poor” being “of one mind and one spirit.” Beware of men who talk about reconciliation between the working class and the master class. That is impossible. The only firm ground upon which the working class can successfully stand is the full recognition of the class war and the determination to fight on to the end—the Social Revolution ; the inauguration of Socialism.

E. J.

The Socialist View of the German Atrocities. (1914)

From the October 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

The present conflict between the Powers of Europe is a tragedy of the first magnitude; but like most stupendous tragedies, it has its humorous aspects for those who are not entirely led away by the superficial. One of the most laughable spectacles of the day is the universal outcry about what our innocent masters and their saintly hirelings of the Press and pulpit are pleased to call the “atrocities of the Huns.” Mark ! it is not here denied that there have been appalling outrages committed by the Kaiser’s hosts. That is not the question with which we are at the moment concerned. It is the capitalist hands upheld in horror, and the round-eyed astonishment of our good, kind masters, that engage our amused attention.

They are astounded and shocked to a marked degree at every manifestation of the rules of warfare adopted by the German military authorities, and run whining like chastised curs about the world, complaining in a childish snivel of every method that presses hardly upon themselves, but which, for various reasons, does not, for the moment, commend itself to the allies.

What the reasons for all this singsong of nauseating hypocrisy are is pretty obvious, and will be returned to later. But for the moment let us deal with the ludicrously clumsy effort of Maurice Maeterlinck, the Belgian author, to exploit the bestial fruits of a bestial system for the benefit of the master class of Britain, France, Russia and Belgium.

Maeterlinck is often spoken of as the “Belgian Shakespeare,” and it may be noted that the English bard himself was not above prostituting his talents in order to curry favour with the great ones of the earth. Henceforth, then, the admirers of Maeterlinck may claim for him a further point of Shakespearean resemblance, by the evidence of a very foolish article of his which was published by the “Daily Mail” and the “Evening News” (Sept. 14th).

Speaking of the atrocities Maeterlinck says:

   “It is not true that in this gigantic crime there are innocent and guilty, or degrees of guilt. They stand on one level, all those who nave taken part in it. . . . It is, very simply, the German, from one end of his country to the other, who stands revealed as a beast of prey . . . We have here no wretched slaves dragged along by a tyrant King, who alone is responsible. Nations have the government they deserve, or rather, the government they have is truly no more than the magnified and public projection of the private morality and mentality of the nation.
  “If eighty million innocent people select and support a monstrous King, those eighty million innocent people merely expose the inherent falseness and superficiality of their innocence; and it is the monster they maintain at their head who stands for all that is true in their nature . . .
   “They must be destroyed as we destroy a nest of wasps, since we know that these can never change into a nest of bees.
   “And even though individually and singly the Germans were all innocent and merely led astray, they are none the less guilty in the mass.   “This is the guilt that counts . . . because it lays bare, underneath their superficial innocence, the subconscious criminality of all.
    “No influence can prevail on the unconscious or the subconscious. It never evolves. Let there come a thousand years of civilisation, a thousand years of peace, with all possible refinements of art and of education, the subconscious element of the German spirit, which is its unvarying element, will remain absolutely the same as it is to-day; and would declare itself, when the opportunity came, under the same aspect, with the same infamy.”

This is the pronouncement of one of the “master-minds” of Europe. It is, presumably, the best this burning patriot of Belgium could do to reduce the “modern Huns” to their proper level, immeasurably below the race under King Albert. Let us see, however, if this pronouncement is logically sound, where it must inevitably lead us to.

On the West Coast of Africa is a large tract of country called the Congo Free State. Unfortunately for the inhabitants of that country it was found that in the great forests of the region there grew abundantly the trees from which rubber is obtained. As usually happens when white men discover defenceless natives in a country whose virgin forests are rich in rubber trees, the aborigines were enslaved and compelled to gather the rubber for their white masters.

The particular case of the Congo Free State formed the subject of a British enquiry by Commissioner Casement, whose report disclosed atrocities more villainous, if that were possible, than anything which has yet been charged against the Germans in Belgium.

The sickening details it is not necessary to more than touch upon. Terrorism was the foundation of the Congo system of exploitation. How the feet of natives were cut off because the amount of rubber they collected did not (as indeed, it never could) satisfy the greed of their masters; how the unfortunate blacks were suspended over slow fires and roasted to death; how a country was devastated in order to pile up wealth for foreign invaders: all this can be read elsewhere by those whose memories need refreshing.

To pile up wealth for whom? For Germans? Oh no! for Belgians. If the German “culture” found its expression in the stark outrages of the smiling plains of Belgium, Belgian “culture” asserted itself in the blood-reeking shambles of the Congo rubber fields. If the German “culture” as exemplified at Louvain and Tirlemont, was incidental to the stirring and (as our capitalist masters will have it) not ignoble romance of war, the Belgian “culture,” as displayed in the African forests, was an integral part of the noble arts of peace. So much for the merits of the respective instances.

Now how may the arguments of Maeterlinck be applied to the case of the Belgian “culture” on the Congo? The acts of violence and outrage were admittedly monstrous. The chief responsibility for them was brought home to that inhuman monster, Leopold, the late King of the Belgians, who made millions out of the death-agonies of braver, cleaner, better, and far lees savage men and women than himself. Here was a “monstrous King,” if ever there was one.

Are we to say, then, with the author of “The Blue Bird," that this “monstrous King” of the Belgians “stands [or did stand] for all that is true in their nature” ? Are we to declare that he, and those who governed with him, were “truly no more than the magnified and public projection of the private morality and mentality of the nation” ? Are we to assert that the Belgian, “from one end of his country to the other, stands revealed as a beast of prey” ? Are we to conclude that “a thousand years of civilisation, a thousand years of peace, with all possible refinements of art and of education,” would find the Belgian people so callous, so brutalised, so low in the scale of human development, that the “morality and mentality of the nation,” as exhibited, according to the arguments of Maurice Maeterlinck, on the Congo, “ would declare itself, when the opportunity came, under the same aspect, with the same infamy” ? If so, then the “modern Huns” would be performing a worthy service to humanity at large by blotting the Belgian race off the face of the earth.

It is not only the Belgians, however, who have proved themselves to be quite the equals of the Germans in the matter of perpetrating outrages that “stagger humanity.” In this respect Russia is so notorious that it is hardly necessary to do more than whisper the name. How the Press of the world rang, a decade or so ago, with the infamies that made the names of the Tzar and his Cossacks stink in the nostrils of men! The mention of Father Gapon will suffice to refresh even the memory of the sycophant Maeterlinck. The latter says: "Through the whole course of history two distinct will-powers have been noticed that would seem to be opposed, elemental manifestations of the spirit of our globe : the one seeking only evil, injustice, tyranny, and suffering, while the other strives for liberty, the right, radiance, and joy. These two powers stand once again face to face ; our opportunity now is to annihilate the one that comes from below.” How much less than “a thousand years of civilisation,”  has sufficed to evolve from “the subconscious element ” of the Russian spirit which gave us the callous butchery of the unarmed workers in St. Petersburg on “Bloody Sunday,” which has asserted itself in a never-ending stream of misery rolling its pitiful flood across the dreary waste to the appalling doom of Siberia, that has glutted its blood lust in innumerable pogroms against helpless and inoffensive Jews—how much less than “a thousand years of peace” has been sufficient to develop out of this unpromising material that “will power” which “strives for liberty, the right, radiance, and joy ”!

Of course, now that “gallant Belgium,” “democratic France,” and “upright and honest Britain" are linked with Russia in the greatest of all atrocities, we are bidden to forget all these things. More even than this, these very barbarities which Russia has inflicted upon her subject races, and particularly upon her,working class, are adduced as evidence of the “great sacrifices” Russia has made on behalf of freedom. And as if this did not achieve the very height of imaginative extravagance, a writer in the “Daily Chronicle” of September 24th coolly informs us that “Russian bureaucracy and autocracy is (sic) a legacy from Germany and German influences. Ever since the days of Peter the Great. Russia has been governed under ideas which have been supplied her by the Prussian Junkers, and now the time has come when the whole Russian people see the chance of freeing themselves from these influences for ever.”

That Germany must bear the blame for all the innocent blood that has soddened the soil of Russia since Peter the Great’s day is ludicrous enough in all conscience, but the spectacle that we are invited to gaze upon, of the Tsar and those who rule Russia “under ideas supplied by Prussian Junkers,” waging war in order to gain the freedom to govern according to the beatific traditions of Western Liberalism is too much for our sobriety. Albeit, it demonstrates with what rubbish these prostitutes of the Press are prepared to insult the intelligence of the working class in order to bolster up the case of their paymasters.

France, also—democratic, chivalric France—has her gobbeted pages of history. The Massacre of S. Bartholomew is a classic example of foul treachery and degraded brutality that will stand so long as dastardly human deeds find s recorder at all. The history of Paris, however, bristles with shameful atrocities, among which it is sufficient to instance—not the suppression, don't think it was that — but the bloody vengeance wreaked upon the workers of Paris for the Commune of 1871. After the fighting ceased 30,000 working men, women, and children of Paris were butchered in cold blood, while the conditions under which those were interned who were to be transported to New Caledonia are too revolting to be printed here. Let those who find themselves impressed with the idea that barbarity is the special attribute of the “modern Huns” read the history of the Paris Commune, and a new light will break in upon them concerning another of Britain's allies.

Nor is Britain herself above the perpetration of atrocious outrage, both at home and abroad. The Boer War furnished examples enough, in spite of official whitewash. The Boer general, Beyers, has just stated that every Boer farmer’s house was a Louvain, and Smuts, with all his fervent turn-coat patriotism, could not deny the statement he could only endeavour to draw the curtain over it

The history of the British rule in India, where famine has succeeded famine, and multitudes have sunk down in their wretched hovels and die of starvation whilst their white masters were exporting the grain Indian people had grown, puts Britain on a level with any Huns, ancient or modern.

But let us come nearer home. How many working-class butcheries have been perpetrated in these islands of recent years? Only three years ago the same military support which has now been given to capitalist France was promised and rendered to the railway magnates of England in order to enable them to force their men to continue to work for 16s and 17s. a week That ended in butchery. Tonypandy is another instance that will be fresh in the memory of many, while we have the testimony of the Liberal politician who “saved the Government” from defeat, Mr. Handel Booth, that in Dublin during a recent labour struggle, women of the working class were dragged from their homes by the hair of their heads and brutally batoned by the police. The same witness also affirmed, what was amply borne out by others, that one of the victims of the struggle was felled by a police truncheon, and then deliberately beaten to death by several policemen as he lay helpless on the ground.

How did the modern Huns of capitalist Britain meet the charge of these cowardly atrocities, committed at their behest and in their profit-mongering interests, and witnessed by one of their own politicians? By resorting to that rich product of Western Liberalism — a sham enquiry—and appointing legal bullies to bully the awkward witness out of Court.

The “Hun” in the British master class is revealed in a thousand places. At the very time that the war broke out instances were causing unpleasant attention to be turned to our masters’ methods. There was the callous butchery in Dublin, engineered by rival politicians, when four people were done to death, among whom a woman was shot dead, and a boy who was killed received a bullet wound in the back and a bayonet thrust in the thigh. The war came opportunely to divert public attention from this Irish “Louvain.” Again, when war broke out thousands of men in the building trades in London had been for many months deprived of their sole means of livelihood—condemned, together with their wives and children, to starvation because they refused to sign a degrading and economically undermining contract form. No snuffling Harold Begbie thought to ask of the starving victims of that “battle for liberty,” the ironic question : “What will you lack'. Sonny?"

British history, ancient and modern, at home and abroad, is a veritable fabric of atrocity, which can find no parallel in the history of any other race on earth. The early invaders of India may have perpetrated orgies of bloodshed that only the whole European civilisation has been able, after nineteen hundred years of Christian humbug, to surpass; the industrial magnates of America may have provided, in the piping times of peace, examples of lawless violence so open, so naked and unashamed, as to startle even us ; but for long exercised, persistent, callous brutality, which is none the less fiendish because it has evolved the cunning to mask itself with legal shams and social sophistries, one can find nothing approaching the industrial history of England.

Let those who want to whine about the atrocities of the Germans first explain away the methods by which the peasantry of feudal England were deprived of their lands and driven from the countryside to become factory slaves ; let them cleanse, if they can, the fortunes of the great cotton families of the blood and agony-drops of the thousands of working class children who were murdered to make those fortunes ; let them blot out from the memory the scores of shamble scenes from Peterloo to Dublin, in which unarmed British workers have fallen to British bullets; let them tell us what higher “culture” than that of the “modern Huns” is indicated in the preventable sacrifice of railway shunters’ lives, the raising of the load line of ships, the contemptuous ignoring of the laws of the mining Acts because the fine for launching 400 miners into eternity is only £24.

Maeterlinck and other sycophantic “intellectuals,” playing their prostitute part in the upholding of that system which gives them their “place in the sun,” may rail and rave as only they know bow, about the German atrocities, but their motives are clear enough. They desire to do two things to inflame the workers of Britain, France, Russia and Belgium against Germany, and to hide the truth.

And the truth is that atrocity is not a national attribute anywhere or at any time. On the contrary, atrocity belongs, not to nations, but to systems. It is of the very nature of all systems of plunder, and it was and is the common attribute of the Huns of Attila, the Huns of the Kaiser, and the Huns of Asquith, Penrhyn, Claude Hamilton & Co, and the Huns of Rockefeller and of Carnegie in America, Werner, Beit & Co in South Africa, Tipoo Tib in Central Africa, and White Wolf in China because all these ancient and modern Attilas were or are engaged in the robbery of their fellows.

The Maeterlincks and other lickspittles of the capitalist class hope, by their outcry against the German atrocities, to obscure the fact that THE atrocity is not Louvain or Tirlenoont or Rheims, but the war itself ; not the blood of unarmed victims spilled at the instance of German bullies of the master class, but the whole hell of horrors which has been let loose upon the world by the MASTER CLASS of Europe—Belgian, French. British, and Russian no less than German. Of this colossal atrocity, the bestial and inevitable fruits of the robbery of the working class of the world, Louvain and the other German outrages are but a part,  and a comparatively insignificant part.

Refuse, therefore, to have your mental balance upset by the squealing of those who raise the cry of “German barbarism.'' There can be nothing but barbarism in those who have launched fifteen millions of working men in the field of death in order to decide who shall control the markets where the wealth stolen from the workers may be sold. And those for whom the ; Maeterlincks speak would welcome ANY atrocities that would, by obsessing the public mind with the false idea that atrocity is a national trait of the German race, prevent the workers from realising that it is the common characteristic of the whole capitalist class, as is revealed in every mill and mine and shunting yard in Britain, in the Carnegie massacre at Pittsburg and the Rockefeller holocaust in Ludlow City, in the Italian brutalities in Morocco, in the rubber shambles of the Congo and the Putumayo, in the death-trap compounds of the Rand, in the slaughter of Socialists by the new-risen and triumphant capitalists of China and Japan, and in the uncountable acts of barbarity by which the capitalists of every country the wide world over establish and maintain their position of plundering dominance over the working class.

A. E. Jacomb

Slaves in War Time (1917)

From the February 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the past couple of years the workers of “this country of ours” have been hearing a great deal about "poison gas” through those journals of "mud and blood,” the "Daily Mail,” "Sunday Chronicle,” "Daily News,” and "Manchester Guardian,” and others of that great heap of refuse which is spread broadcast daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly, to the detriment of the wage-slaves who buy them.

This "poison gas" is the gas which is being used by the various armed nations against their opponents on the European field of slaughter. But we Socialists draw attention to another kind of "poison gas” the doses of "mental chloroform” daily given out to the wage workers by parson, politician, and journalist—all of them hirelings of the master class.

These individuals, in order to gain life’s necessaries, "gas” the workers with their fairy stories concerning man’s activities and his relations with other men in the material world, and fool them with the "eternal life” phantasy.

Of course, it is not to the interest of our masters to have editorials dealing with and exposing this brand of "poison gas.” Such work is left to the working class itself; hence the reason and the need for the Socialist Standard.

It is surprising to find how many workers are always ready to believe anything the papers and their masters tell them. We have heard a lot of cant and hypocrisy mouthed by parson, pressman, and politician on "Equality of Sacrifice.” They wax quite eloquent on "everyone doing his bit.” It is, however, rather hard to find what most of these hirelings and their masters (the employing class) have sacrificed. For instance, what have the food manufacturers, the shipping companies, or the armament firms sacrificed? Their profits?—not likely ! You see what is really meant by their cant phrases is sacrifice for the "lower classes.”

Everyone nowadays is aware of the huge profits that are being raked in by our "good” masters. Consequently, to the workers who have started to think for themselves the question naturally arises, "For what are we fighting?” But the reply, of course, rests upon what is meant by "we.” If "we” means the workers, then the only reply can be, a more intense form of slavery in the future even than in the past, greater poverty and misery for the many, and an outlook eloquent of strikes and revolts of the workers against their miserable conditions.

On the other hand, if "we” stands for the master class, then the fighting is for the control of trade routes and the securing of further markets in which to sell their surplus manufactures ; the gaining of territory in which to "collar” the natural resources, and the obtaining of cheap native labour. In other words, it means big profits now, with the chance of even bigger profits in the future.

Are we not constantly having these facts brought to our minds by flaring newspaper headlines, such as "How to Capture Germany’s Trade,” "How Great Britain may Increase Her Share of the World’s Commerce,” and so on? Then, again, have we not got such things in our midst as the Anti-German League, whose object is the smashing of the industries of Germany? Have not "our’ politicians told us that as soon as the war is over we must be ready to smash the Germans on the field of commerce after having smashed them on the field of blood?

Of course, in order that the state of affairs may not be too easily seen, our masters and their agents (the "patriots”) lie and bully and invent such statements to gull the workers as that this war is "a fight for Liberty and Freedom,” and “a struggle to suppress German Militarism.” And this, mind you, when the masters are so rapidly increasing militarism here.

Then we have the good old catch cry of the violation of Belgium's neutrality, as though any country hesitates to break treaties and make "scraps of paper” of them when it suits their interests to do so. This is admitted by that "patriot," Harold Begbie, of “Fall In" fame, when he says ("Daily Chronicle", Aug. 5, 1914), “At every Christian frontier you can pick up a broken treaty and a dishonoured bond.”

Then England is supposed to be fighting for the “rights of small nations,” this after what happened to the Dutch Republics a few years ago. Concerning this we might with interest read what was said at that time by Mr. Merriman, who was then an English member of the Cape Assembly. He was reported thus:

   I say “never again" will England hold the title she did as the friend of small peoples. When it is a question of tyranny towards some small powers, how can she say anything? The Transvaal and the Free State will be flung in her teeth.

—“The Speaker," Oct. 27th, 1900. 

And to show how kind-hearted this country was we were told :

    We went into war for equal rights, and we were prosecuting it for annexation. Wc went into the country for philanthropy and we remained in it for burglary.—Mr. Lloyd George, reported in the “Manchester Guardian,” July 26th, 1900.

All the flowery excuses which have been spread broadcast since August 1914 are but dust thrown in the eyes of the toilers to prevent them from seeing the truth.

Some very enlightening articles have recently made their appearance in the columns of the anti-working class papers. One in the “Weekly Dispatch” for March 19th, 1916, which told of the huge profits that have been, and are still being, made owing to war conditions, commenced with this valuable piece of evidence:

   In this country millions have been made by companies who hold the lives of the civilian population in the hollow of their hands.

This knocks the bottom out of the statement so often made that we are fighting for our liberties. What liberties are possessed by any person whose life is held in the hollow of some other person’s hand ?

In the same paper for Dec. 24th last another “war profits” article appeared. To give that part which deals with armament firms, would not, perhaps, be out of place. For such people a "good” war is a heaven-sent blessing.

Munition profits—in the early months of the war at any rate—were fabulous. Recent figures in some cases, are not accessible, but here are the facts of a few typical companies' change in fortune:

-->

	Latest Profits.	Pre-War Profits.
Armstrong	£852,300	£689,000
Cammell Laird	301,500	171,700
Curtis and Harvey	143,800	48,100
Projectile	192,700	14,000
Webbley and Scott	61,300	9,500
Thorneycroft	239,670	32,000

(6 months only.)

From such instances we can see how well the master class can afford to invest a portion of their profits in the War Loan at 5 per cent. Yet they would have us believe they are making a sacrifice. A sacrifice at 5 per cent. smells good. The fellows who are making the sacrifices are the workers, who are being used as food for cannon, and who, when they return broken from the war, are not even given the bare means of existence.

How often do we find in the daily and weekly Press such headlines as "Starved under Hun Rule”? Yet what about the thousands of starvation cases under the rule of the Brit-hun ?

That high-class organ of piffle and bluff, the “Daily Dispatch,” on Aug. 9th last commenced its editorial in the following strain :

  Among the good resolutions we all made in entering this war was one that the scandalous treatment that in past wars was meted out to our broken soldiers should not this time disgrace our national fame.
 We recalled Mr. Robert Blatchford's piercing remark about “the candidate for the British workhouse charging the guns at Balaclava,” and nothing had bitten deeper into the nation’s conscience than the spectacle of war-worn veterans, with medals on their chests, selling matches and bootlaces at back doors. We rightly resolved, at any rate, that that mutt never happen again.

After pondering over the latter part the only conclusion one can come to is that our masters never expected any of their warriors, even the wrecked ones, to return. Of course, the attempt is made to convey the impression that every provision is made for those of our “Tommies" who come back maimed, but does anyone with the least common sense believe that? No! "Equality of sacrifice” is a fine phrase for rogues to use and fools to swallow.

The shareholders in shipping, tea, armament, coal, iron, milling and other companies, are obtaining dividends of from 35 to 40 per cent, without ever having done a day's work to earn it. On the other hand, the man who has been broken in fighting for such shareholders gets a pension of 8d. a day and is buried a pauper. Even this is not the worst, for the "Weekly Dispatch” for Dec. 20th says there are "50,000 broken soldiers without pensions."

One has only to go through the daily papers to find scores of cases regarding the treatment of the broken Tommy. Space admits only of a few in the present article, but each goes to prove our contention. Thus we read in our masters’ papers accounts like these :

  At a meeting of the Redruth Urban Council a member declared that numbers of soldiers, broken in the war, called on him every day stating that they were unable to secure employment of any kind and had to go to the workhouse to get food.

—“Manchester Evening News,” Feb. 3rd, 1916.

  A case was reported this week where two heroes found their way into the workhouse because they were unable to get any allowance from the War Office. It is this sort of thing that does a great deal of harm and in itself is entirely indefensible.

“Reynolds’s,” Feb. 13th, 1916.

Of course, we know the "harm” our masters are afraid of. It is not that the soldiers may "demand” a mere allowance, but that the above treatment may help in a large degree to awaken the workers from their slumbers, in which case the wage slaves, becoming intelligent and understanding the class struggle, will not waste their time demanding anything, but will turn their energies toward the capture of the political machinery, in order to abolish capitalism and its many evils.

"A grateful country will never forget you.” So runs the cry. The following shows the amount of truth in it:

AN EX-SOLDIER’S PLIGHT.

NO PENSION, NO FOOD, AND NO SHELTER.

“I am a discharged soldier,” said a man who asked a West London magistrate for advice, “I have served my King and country for twelve years, eight months. I have been in France gassed and wounded. I came out time-expired, and went back again for 180 days in the Royal Garrison Artillery. Since I have been discharged I have only had two sums of 10s. from the Soldiers and Sailors Association. I have been sleeping out for several nights and have had no food for two or three days." The man, who looked very ill, had had no pension, and the magistrate said if the story was true it was a case of very great hardship, and directed the court missionary to investigate the case, and, in the meantime, to give the man a little help.

—“News of the World," Oct.8th, 1916.

And in the Manchester edition of the "Daily Dispatch” for Aug. 18th last there was a photograph of a man standing alongside a street organ, and underneath were the words : “Not receiving the pension due to him, a Manchester soldier, disabled at Ypres, turns a street barrel organ for a living.”

These cases go to show the attitude of the ruling class toward the workers, and are irresistible evidence that it was rank hypocrisy when they tried to make us believe that they intended to "make good ’ to the "heroes.”

Those of the discharged "Tommies” who can work are treated in a similar way. The following, although it has been quoted in these columns before, will show the truth of my statement :

   Army and Navy men wanted who have done their bit; bring discharge papers ; salary 28s. a week to start with."—“Daily Chronicle,” July 21st, 1916. 

There is magnificent generosity for our gallant warriors ; 28s. a week for those "who have  done their bit”!  One would like to ask, where is their country now? The truth is the workers of all lands, whether they be Germans, Russians, Frenchmen, Belgians, Englishmen, or Italians, have no country ; they are but the slaves of those who own and control society’s means of production.

The war, we Socialists hope, will be the means of enlightening large numbers of our fellow workers as to their true position in society.

To us the only hope of freedom, comfort, and happiness lies in "A system of society bused upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means, and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community." And this can only be brought about by the workers learning and understanding the Socialist position.

H. C. A.